About “Watch Dem Niggas”

A rare gem from Nas' It Was Written/ Mafioso phase which saw him jump on the mafioso bandwagon started by Kool G Rap, changing his persona from Nasty Nas/ Nas to Nas Escobar, Watch Dem Niggas is a song of betrayal, which sees an anonymous person addressed in the second person, perhaps the listener or even Nas himself, betrayed by his crew and his women. With a silky smooth bass and synth sample from Earl Klugh, as well as an excellent Foxy Brown hook, this song comes together as an excellent, though relatively unheralded post-Golden Age track. This is also an important track for The Firm, as Foxy Brown and Nas composed half of that hip-hop supergroup.

Nas: “Things were getting a little dangerous. I was hanging with a lot of dangerous people and I think my brother told me, ‘Watch them niggas that’s close to you.’ I just took it from there and made it a song. That’s the one foot still in the street album. They pulled me over and I got arrested at that time in a Lexus, I had no license and I had a gun on me. They took my car and they arrested me. That’s what was happening to me at the time.”

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Nas had this to say to Complex:

Nas: I was hanging with a lot of dangerous people & I think my brother told me, “Watch them niggas that’s close to you.” So I made it a song. I’d been pulled over & arrested at that time in a Lexus—I had no license & I had a gun on me. That’s what was happening to me at the time.